At 64, Paula Deen announced on NBC’s ‘Today’ show that she has Type 2 diabetes, a diagnosis that she said she received three years ago. Soon after, the world discovered that our favorite down-home mama has been cooking up more than collard greens.

“For the past two days the world has been in an uproar over Paula Deen’s admission she’s got Type 2 diabetes and that she’s now a paid spokeswoman for a drug manufacturer,” said the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS.

Since the news hit the airwaves, critics have gotten their aprons in a bunch calling for Deen’s spatula. The issue is why the cooking show host, restaurateur, author, actress and Emmy Award-winning television personality continued to promote buttered sausage pancake egg sandwiches after learning she has Type 2 diabetes.

“It is hypocritical [for Paula] to have continued to very publicly promote entirely unhealthy food choices so vital to the management of diabetes,” Donna Shaft, a marketing consultant who has been battling type 2 diabetes for 20 years, told FoxNews.

That’s like chastising your mother for baking peach cobbler for the holidays or throwing rocks at the vendor on the street who sells chilly-cheese hotdogs loaded with relish, mustard and onions. What about our favorite Baltimore hipster cake club, Ace of Cakes’ Duff Goldman, should we ask him for his medical records?

“Hmmm, last time anyone checked, there was no requirement that TV types disclose their health issues. Fact is, most don’t do it until, sadly, they’re flushed out because some ‘close friend’ has dropped a dime to a cheesy magazine or it disrupts their ability to continue working,” said the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS.

While it is true that 25.8 million children and adults in the United States—8.3 percent of the population—have diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, 18.8 million people have been diagnosed while 7.0 million people have gone undiagnosed. Over 1 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in people aged 20 years and older in 2010, says the American Diabetes Association.

“You can’t just eat your way to Type 2 diabetes,” the American Diabetes Association Geralyn Spollett told the New York Times. “But, Southern cooking, as often practiced, can be particularly hazardous to those predisposed to the disease. There’s no denying that Paula’s food has a lot of what we call the deadly triangle: fat, sugar and salt,” she said.

But I think the real issue is and has always been moderation. “See, to get into this foodie frenzy, one has to also believe that somewhere in this great planet, someone is eating Deen’s cooking night after night, week after week, month after month,” said the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS.

To her credit, Deen has pledged to donate some of her proceeds to the American Diabetes Association, which will go a long way toward much-needed research.

CBS News reported that in a segment of ABC’s food chat show ‘The Chew’ that aired Wednesday, Deen said she and her two grown sons, Bobby and Jamie, are working with the drug company’s Diabetes in a New Light campaign “because we, like everybody else, have to work.” But, she added, the three are “in a position” to “set aside a certain percentage (of the Novo Nordisk money) and we’re donating that back to the ADA.”

In 1957, Mao Tse Tung told a group of students, “ … You young people, full of vigor and vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the morning. Our hope is placed on you. The world belongs to you. …”

How inspiring it must have been for students around the world to hear those words. Some of them became activist fighting for the civil rights and women’s rights movements or innovators who developed technology that would ultimately define the 20th century. While others went on to college, got married, had kids and worked hard in their chosen careers.

Kurt Vonnegut once said, “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high-school class is running the country.”

Among them is my mother who retired last year. Like most baby boomers, she doesn’t fit the stereotypical retiree fleeing to Florida to spend her remaining “golden years” playing golf or bridge. Nor does she fit into the gray-haired “granny” obsessively knitting sweaters for her grandkids’ stereotype either. “Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art,” said Stanislaw Lec.

Today’s seniors— the baby boomer generation — are much more active than their parents were during retirement. Still full of their youthful vigor, many of them are very involved in their communities, clubs and activities. My mother, for example, continues to stomp her feet during her weekly Zumba classes. She also lends her expertise as a former counselor by volunteering at a local shelter for battered women.

But despite their efforts to defy the stereotypes, many baby boomers are facing issues that their parents never imagined when they retired. One of the most pressing is the future of health care. “With more than 1.5 million baby boomers a year signing up for Medicare, the program’s future is one of the most important economic issues for anyone now 50 or older,” said USAToday.

Medicare is projected to run out of money by 2024. As Democrats and Republicans continue to bicker over privatization, baby boomers are left with an uncertain future. “We’ve put more effort into helping folks reach old age than into helping them enjoy it,” said Frank Howard Clark.

Our beatniks, pedal pushers, greasers, militants and flower children who changed the world deserve so much better.

Last month, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration agents at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas seized a cupcake from a woman at the security checkpoint. The frosty little treat probably wouldn’t have made the “news” if it didn’t clear security at another airport one week earlier.

Rebecca Hains, the conspirator, wrote on her blog after the incident, “ … I’d been allowed to bring cupcakes-in-jars through Boston’s Logan airport on my outbound flight with no problem.”

According to Hains, the TSA agent responded, “If Boston had done their job right in the first place, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.”

The story had gotten just a bit tastier when TSA blogger Robert Burns wrote, “This wasn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill cupcake. Unlike a thin layer of icing that resides on the top of most cupcakes, this cupcake had a thick layer of icing inside a jar.”

Brian Vilagie, manager of Wicked Good Cupcakes in Cohasset, Mass. and the co-conspirator who created the jar-filled cupcakes told CNN that “frosting shouldn’t be considered a gel or liquid.”

Vilagie added, “Truth be told, we’re not sure this cupcake in a jar should actually be called a cupcake.”

Forbes’ definition of a cupcake was more mouthwatering. A blogger posted,“Go back to the old-school cupcake-to-frosting ratio, and I’m convinced that the percentage of obese Americans would decline from 33.8% to, oh, say, 33.75% (hey, you gotta start somewhere, right?). Plus, too much frosting is just gross. If this requires TSA enforcement, then I’m all for it.”

So CNN asked expert Zac Young, a past contestant on Top Chef Just Desserts and executive pastry chef at Flex Mussels in New York City. “A cupcake needs to stand alone to be a cupcake and a cupcake is also defined by its wrapper. Unless there are pieces of wrapper floating in the jar, I would not classify it as a cupcake,” Young told CNN.

LA Weekly agreed on its blog, “At least making us realize that while confiscating a cupcake might be SEO-friendly and ridiculous, so is smashing your cupcake into a jar like a weird Jello fetus and not expecting airport security to take a second look.”

Swirled and sprinkled, dipped or glazed, apparently the decorated jar-filled cupcake violated the TSA’s 3-1-1 rule, according to CNN. Just a month before the “Cupcakegate” scandal broke, CNN warned holiday travelers about “foods that tend to fall under the TSA’s 3-1-1 policy governing liquids, gels and aerosols … ,” in a November blog.